With regard to the merits of this drama as a comedy, leaving out of consideration the peculiarities of the present version, we should now be too late to find fault if we felt ourselves disposed to do so; for it has long since obtained the admiration of all the most polished societies of Europe. As a comic exposition of the workings of the passion of jealousy, it is allowed to be at once without any superior, and to show that the intrinsic difference between tragedy and comedy does not consist in the former regarding the passions, and the latter only the manners, but in the characters, and the incidents by which the characters are affected. In this piece, the passion developed is the same as in the Othello of Shakespeare, and the skill with which it is accomplished is scarcely less ingenious; and yet nothing can be more opposite than the respective effects of the two plays, arising wholly from the constitutional difference between the character of Edward or Lindoro and that of the noble Moor, and the circumstances with which they are exhibited.

If the managers were informed that this piece was a translation of one of the best of Goldoni's comedies, we cannot conceive on what ground they could presume to refuse it. If they were not so informed, we must believe that their objection arose from the shape of the lines, as we have been told that the players have an almost inveterate antipathy to the very sight of blank verse. But, perhaps, it was thought that it did not require sufficient strength of lungs and distortion of visage in representation to suit, what they assert is, the public taste; or that it was deficient in incidents-which is to say, that we cannot tell what it wants, but that in our opinion it will not succeed in representation, or serve the interests of our concern to bring it forward.

As we intend to take occasion in the introduction to our second volume to make some observations on the principles of dramatic composition, we have in the mean time endeavoured to ascertain what is really meant by dramatic incidents in the cant of the theatres; but hitherto our inquiries have not been very successful. We find, however, that the prevalent opinion for the most part is, that in tragedy, the incidents should consist in drawing swords, stamping with great fury, and in certain ladies and gentlemen, calling themselves ghosts, ascending and descending by square holes cut in the floor of the stage; and that in comedy, they must be made up of chairs and tables overturned, and the actors playing at hide and seek, behind screens and under sophas. The validity of the claims of such sort of phenomena to be regarded as legitimate dramatic incidents, we will assuredly investigate, for we very much suspect that they are only the spurious offspring of those unprincipled creatures, Pantomime and Melo-drama.